Is a doctor who's medically conservative likely also to be politically conservative?

Maybe but doubtful. A medically conservative doctor may just be trying to make sure he doesn’t do harm and likes to stick with the things he knows works. Where a doctor who likes to experiment either is pushing drugs for pharmaceutical companies and is willing to give anything a try or they are ambitious to make a name for themselves, or finds that conservative remedies aren’t as effective as new remedies. Also, the conservative doctor may become that way after some lawsuits or high insurance payments. For example. Some doctors have become more conservative and are trying to get patients to lose weight and exercise and eat a healthy diet with the elderly because some are becoming gun shy about over-medicating the elderly.

My point is that it’s hard to tell the reason behind one doctor being conservative or daring.
If however, he is conservative in nature and pads his bills, and drives a super expensive car and lives in a super expensive neighborhood, or has a Natzi symbol or white nationalist associate, then it’s a sure thing he’s probably a conservative, to say the least.

Hmmm… Ok, here’s a real-life example. I moved cross country a couple years ago. After we settled into our new home, I made an appointment with a local dentist. He had excellent reviews, so I picked him. After looking my mouth over, he said it would take $3500 to fix my teeth, that they were “in bad shape.”

I called my previous dentist, and told her about his exam, and she told me to find another dentist, because “There is no way I left your mouth in that kind of shape!”

I found another dentist (drove an hour to get there). It was worth the drive. He told me that my teeth would be ok for now if I take extra care in cleaning, but that in 6 months I’d need some work done. Six months later I had that work done. The bill was $350.

Bottom line, my dentist in my old town was conservative. She didn’t like to do unnecessary work. The first dentist in my new town was quite liberal in comparison. He wanted to give my mouth a beauty make-over, when all I wanted was a healthy mouth with no extras.

My current dentist is like the one in my other state. No frills, just great, honest dental care, with a concern for me as well as not over charging me.

I don’t have any idea what their political leanings are, but I doubt that has anything to do with it.

Oh, I don’t know what kind of car the dentist in my old town drove, but both dentists where I live now (the honest one and the dishonest one) drive really nice cars. You can’t count on appearances of affluence as an indicator of anything.

I would not assume this at all, but it will be interesting to see if anyone in the medical field says that has been their observation.

By the way, when I was in the throws of trying to have a baby with my fertility problems I would ask my OBGYNs if they put me before the fetus. Especially, living in the Bible Belt where the two hospital systems around me were St. Francis and Baptist. It did cross my mind that I could be left to die to save a baby.

@JLeslie I have never heard of that idea. In fact, I think the opposite is true. If the mother’s life is in danger, they take the baby to save her life. However, I have heard of several instances where the mother fought her doctors to try to keep her baby, even though they thought it unwise.

All NHS doctors in the UK are working for the state and will give similar medication and or advice. I don’t think there is generally much difference between them apart from their personalities.

I have never thought much about the political views of my doctors. It just isn’t an issue over here. Traditionally the Labour Party in the UK were more supportive of the National Health Service but on the other hand the Conservative Party favoured high earners and income tax reduction. Politics in the UK has changed greatly in recent years however with the rise of nationalist and green parties and also many working people who would have voted Labour are now supporting the Conservatives.

Some UK doctors work in private medicine and some NHS doctors work in private medicine “on the side” but this is controversial. I would guess they would vote Conservative, the party that is most supportive of private enterprise.

My very conservative doctor is medically liberal. He very much encourages vaccines, too.

My doctors’ political leanings were never something that I thought about, much.

My daughter’s pediatrician never pushed the vaccine for her. He never mentioned it at all when I took her for her annual physical, in June. I believe he’s a Democrat, because we’ve had conversations about minimum wage and his beliefs about how minimum wage should be determined. This conversation came about when I brought it up.

My doctors and dentists don’t talk politics, probably because it’s such a hot issue nowadays. I can guess what they are, but I could also be wrong with my guesses.

My regular doctor is not pushing medications, which I like. He’s very level headed when it comes to test results, with a calm demeanor. He’s from Russia.

I don’t see any connection between the two. First of all, who knows what a political conservative is anymore? It’s clearly not someone who believes in personal liberty or responsibility.

To me, a conservative doctor is one who doesn’t rush to intervention or zebras when the hooves in the night might be horses. It’s someone who doesn’t over-medicate. Someone who weighs the evidence before making a diagnosis. I don’t see any connection between that and political leanings one way or the other.

The word “conservative” as used in medicine and general English has almost nothing to do with so-called political “conservatism”, except in a very allegorical way that assumes a certain (bullshit) political context, so no.

It’s an interesting question. My inclination is that they’re “different dimensions,” as you put it. I do think there is likely a bias for providers to use their skill set more than other providers would to treat the same the same diagnosis. For example, surgeons may be more likely to operate than an internal medicine specialist who might approach the same situation more with medication. Obviously this would be on the margins, the majority of situations are probably pretty clear-cut one way or the other.

@snowberry There have been cases where women who were raped were not offered the morning after pill to prevent pregnancy. That would be one example where the doctor was using his own opinion about abortion. I remember an interview once where the woman would have been fine with preventing the pregnancy, but she found out she was pregnant when the fetus was farther along, and her own philosophy on abortion was she didn’t like aborting later in pregnancy, and so she was maybe suing the doctor (I don’t remember if she sued) or maybe she was just talking about what happened to her in the interview, it was a long time ago.

If I was unable to speak for myself and was pregnant, I would not feel completely safe in a Catholic hospital that they would save my life over the fetus. Catholic hospitals often move the patient to a different hospital so they don’t have to take care of such things. My sister worked for a Catholic hospital for a while, and still works with Catholic medical and care institutions, and she overall has extremely positive things to say about the Catholic hospitals except for this sort of thing.

The husband of a friend of mine wouldn’t prescribe birth control for his teenage patients back in the early 2000’s I knew him. His wife used to tell him that he was condemning the girls to an abortion or having to give birth. He felt he was facilitating the children to choose to not have sex. This was 20 years ago when probably some girls still needed an excuse like irregular periods to get the pill, and other ridiculousness that I never had to deal with, not even in the 80’s when I was a teenager, but maybe because I was in military care, I really am not sure. The military does whatever it wants.

I don’t know what “medically conservative” means.

No

I worked with both conservative and liberal physicians in Cardiology who were big on providing interventions that others thought were unnecessary. I swear to God it was just fun for them to do procedures… regardless of patient desires, evidence-based practice, or necessity. So that would be anecdotal evidence that political leanings are not associated with medical practice.

Aside from medically “conservative” or “liberal”, I would think centrist and left-leaning politically-minded physicians might be more patient-centered in their approach.

@JLeslie I’m sorry you had to have that conversation, but it was smart… especially in the south.

A further comment on dentistry: I have had more than a few dentists tell me how corrupt the dentist business is.

If crooks favor a particular philosophy or political party, it would likely be the one that is soft on their profession.

@Cupcake “…fun for them to do procedures…” That’s what I think too. Scary.

I don’t think one follows from the other here. If we take the dentist example from one of the answers, it also becomes clear that “doctors” is too wide a term. It refers equally to general practitioners who see and treat daily sicknesses to those who are called up to provide life-saving surgical intervention. In the case of the latter, even terms such as “conservative” would be inaccurate.

For instance, if a doctor believes that surgical intervention might not necessarily improve one’s condition or chances of survival, and suggests as much to the patient’s family – are they being conservative? Or if they believe this and still suggest surgery because there is the slightest chance it might save the patient’s life, but not necessarily so – is this doctor also being conservative? As one can see, one could justifiably argue that both doctors are conservative; or one could argue that one is, whereas the other isn’t; or even that neither are. “Conservative” doesn’t tend to be an illuminating term; it often encourages people to gloss over the nuances. It can be as useless as the “left” vs “right” categories. For instance, people claim to be pro-life and pro death penalty at the same time. Or Pro choice and anti death penalty. The “seeming” inconsistency here is a nuance. Contemporary sociologists argue that, far from guiding debate and conversations, these terms are used to vilify alternative worldviews and that they also represent a refusal to engage in debate. Not saying you’re doing these things, but just thought this was interesting :)